An excavator tearing up dirt and rock ton by ton and dumping it into a machine that blasts it with water and shakes it down a sluice box, separating the heavier material across a series of riffles, and the gold flakes eventually being sifted down into a thin layer of synthetic ‘moss’ to be collected later. A scoop of dirt and rock being carefully panned by hand, swirling the water gently to gradually reveal whatever small bits of precious metal are hidden beneath. I could have used any number of metaphors to display the disparity between brute forcing one’s way through as much material as possible, or taking time to handle an individual project with a bit more focus- a shotgun blast versus a precision rifle, fast food versus fine dining, a hammer and sickle, whatever. I’ve been watching Gold Rush: Alaska lately.

DF Talk 17 is out. It discusses playstyles central to Dwarf Fortress, based on the definitions defined in the previous article. After contemplating further, after reading the thread’s responses, both before and after the Talk was posted, here’s my follow up thoughts on the issue.

This is reposted from a thread I created on the Dwarf Fortress forums to percolate some discussion about what people get out of the game. It was equal parts devised to get some talk going amongst players about what they want to see more of from the development, what keeps ’em around and such, as well as to use that information for DF Talk fuel. Once the DF Talk episode about playstyles drops, and some discussion filters out from that, I’ll be posting a follow-up in the thread to crystallize the completely non-scientific findings.